Hi there.
My name is Savanna Vest; if you’re reading this, you’ve unearthed my first-year humanities portfolio for Davidson College.
Please play the playlist below while reading through the site; I have a separate page that delves more into my exploration of music throughout this course, but this is my favorite playlist from the year. This playlist encompasses the intersection of my old music tastes with the music I’ve gotten into during my first year of college.
Quick Facts
Some housekeeping-esque details about me:
❀ I’m a first-generation college student from Louisville, Kentucky.
❀ I have two loving cats, Rizzo and Gia.
❀ My passions are centered on writing and social justice, and I have a background as a student journalist and activist for the March for Our Lives movement that came to fruition during my senior year of high school.
❀ I cry every time I laugh. Do not be alarmed if you see tears streaming down my face in public accompanied by hysteric laughter. (If you are an acquaintance of mine who has witnessed this but was unsure of what was occurring—I apologize, profusely.)
❀ I started singing along to my playlists during morning commutes in high school so that I wouldn’t fall asleep while driving, and now I just won’t stop singing . . . so this year I’ve joined Davidson Singers to learn!
❀ I am currently planning to study Sociology in conjunction with a double major or minor of another social science- or humanities-oriented program here.
Intrapersonality
The concept for my portfolio’s theme, “Intrapersonality,” came to be from my first semester emphasis on self-care and self-love. To some extent, I’m known as “self-care girl” to my friends because I talk about it quite a bit; nevertheless, my emphasis on self-care came from a personal desire, necessity, to be able to survive college, not knowing at all what to expect.
As mentioned above, I’m a first-generation college student from Louisville, Kentucky; the concept of college—let alone a private, liberals-arts based education—was a privilege to explore. All of my close and extended family essentially lives in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky, and the few who attended college either dropped out or attended a community college—which involves an arguably different experience than what Davidson College has been for me so far. This lack of knowledge, lack of advising from relatives who have been through the college process, was something that frightened me: the unknown of what lay ahead and the feeling of being two steps behind all of my peers. Combined with my own personal struggle with anxiety, college wasn’t just an exciting new frontier to explore—it loomed like the next challenge.
It was going to test me. It was not uncommon to hear from the adults and friends in my life, “Don’t worry, if you can’t handle it, you can always transfer back to the local university.” And don’t get me wrong, the local university is an amazing education; it was just this constant, nagging mindset, this environment, that made me feel as though I did not have the tools or internal capability to succeed at a top institution, far from home, which no one in my family had ever done before.
So the summer before college, I decided that I would not return to those unhealthy habits that fostered internal feelings of insecurity, insufficiency, and inability. I realized that I had to make this supportive, successful environment within myself; I couldn’t rely upon others to provide it for me. I had to learn to be okay with myself, to accept myself, before I could confront external pressures. I entered college with the mindset to prioritize myself—my physical, mental, and emotional well-being—over the stresses of academics, social interaction, or extracurricular activities.
The second half of 2018 marked the beginning of an intrapersonal dialogue with myself, a journey that I’ve been maintaining throughout the duration of my first year of college. To be able to discuss and take part in the interpersonal relations informing my life’s passions and the revolutions we’ve discussed thus far in this humanities course, I realized that my own intrapersonal revolutions required recognition of some form.
So while this portfolio may not exclusively detail my journey with myself, all the work I’ve produced has been enabled by these conversations, this care, with and for myself. I don’t have the insider scoop on the perfect methods for self-care, nor every solution to my or others’ problems. But in recognizing that I deserve prioritization, I can better recognize my own humanity, and ultimately, the humanity of the world around me.
If you want to reach me outside of my website’s bubble, I can be contacted at savest@davidson.edu.
You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter.
